I was recently informed that atheists have no morals. Thoughts?

I was informed by a coworker who did not know I was atheist that atheists have no morals. After I nicely told him I was an atheist, he awkwardly looked at me and shut up. My supervisor got angry and told me I was being offensive. Apparently, it's okay to label an entire group of people as immoral, but it's not okay to simply state your lack of religion.

I would like to know what you say when people call you immoral or what you would day if someone said this to you. I'm just wondering in general, not necessarily in a work setting. I live in the Bible Belt, so this comes up in my life more often than one would expect.

I point out that morality and ethics arise from the conflict between survival instinct, and grouping instinct that we possess by being social animals. The conflict exists because different people draw their own lines at different points along this individual welfare vs. group welfare line, and this is a conflict reflected broadly in philosophy and politics.

Morality and ethics do not arise from belief in magic, super-powered, imaginary friends. Neither do they arise from books that promote or condone genocide, the murder of children, slavery, the reduction of women to property, and the abuse of fig trees because they don’t yield figs out of season.

Speaking of people with no morals, I found this from the Secular Coalition for America, regarding the Republican Party, hopeful:

The Republican National Committee held its winter meeting last week in North Carolina, where the Party discussed new strategies it could employ in future elections. Quietly discussed were ideas on how the Party can track and work with the religiously unaffiliated going forward.

Well, we were talking about tattoos and good tattoo artists in the area and I asked what could be done to change a cross tattoo into something else because I know someone who would like to do that. They said that sounded sacrilegious, so I said he's an atheist so it doesn't matter. Someone commented "he must have gotten the tattoo back when he had morals." And that's where it went downhill. Lol, kind of a silly story in my opinion. People are so quick to judge.

"Jesus said to his Jews, 'Love God as I love him, as his son, what are morals to us sons of God?'" Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil section 164.

Whoever is different is frightening. The denier of the gods (going back well before xianity) brings disaster upon the entire group. If you're not prepared to be expelled from the herd, better be a hypocrite or develop a thick skin. Also, you'll be mistrusted -- your work relations will suffer. Being an atheist has unpleasant social consequences. There are plenty of god-proxies in the world who'll cheerfully use prejudice as a way to get ahead at your expense. Know what you're doing -- the US in particular is a very dangerous place for atheism.